As an alternative to performing more invasive types of procedures in order to examine, diagnose, and treat internal body tissues, many physicians are using minimally invasive devices such as catheters and endoscopes to perform such tasks. Such medical devices are inserted into the body and routed to a point of interest in order to allow the physician to view and treat the internal body tissues. Generally such devices include some sort of image producing mechanism, such as a fiber optic imaging guide that transmits an image along a bundle of fibers to a proximal camera or eyepiece. Alternatively, video endoscopes or catheters include a small image sensor that produces images of the tissue electronically.
In a conventional endoscope, the distal tip of the device is often opaque and includes one or more windows or lenses that are used for the delivery of illumination light and an objective lens assembly for either transmitting an image to the proximal end of the endoscope or for focusing an image on an image sensor. While the opaque distal tips have generally been proven to work well, improvements can be made.